Speaker
Description
This study argues that ecological crises in Nuri Bilge Ceylan does not emerge from environmental disasters but from a gradual rupture between humans and natural world. Ceylan’s films recur that emotional, ethical and social collapses of his characters coincide with their distance from nature. It could be suggested that nature in Ceylan’s films functions as almost as an invitation for humans to witness its deep isolation, to look deep down inside, as well. This study, within the perspective of ecocritical theory, ecological alienation and ecosemiotics argues that in Ceylan’s cinematic discourse, crisis results from the rupture of human-nature relations.
Reading The Small Town (1997), Clouds of May (1999), Distant (2002), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), and Winter Sleep (2014) closely, this study demonstrates that landscapes serve as active characters rather than passive settings. The Small Town and Clouds of May depicts breakdown of familial and social bonds through the depletion of rural ecology. Distant portrays detachment of human from nature as a source of existential despair while barren Anatolian steppe is utilized to indicate institutional and moral stagnation. Lastly, in Winter Sleep the sensitive landscape of Cappadocia illustrates how social class and human influence intersect.
Ceylan situates ecological crisis within the everyday life, presenting nature as both witness and victim of human alienation. Urbanized human life confronts with existance of barren lands, rural environments as well as lifestyles in those stagnant rhtym of life. This study suggests that his films contribute to contemporary world cinema in a unique way: the loss of ecological connection is a crisis itself.
| Keywords | ecocriticism, human and nature, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s cinema |
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| hande.kolat@atlas.edu.tr |